Pressure on Australian Government grows over Ansett

By DANIEL RIORDAN and AGENCIES

Ansett's administrators met Australian Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and Treasurer Peter Costello last night in attempts to secure the grounded airline's future.

One of the issues at stake was believed to be securing a Government guarantee for new tickets on any Ansett planes that return to the air.

The talks follow the collapse on Tuesday of a deal under which Qantas would have wet-leased 10 of Ansett's Airbus planes.

Pressure on the Australian Government to provide some form of assistance - possibly in the way of guarantees to passengers - increased with the ending yesterday of Ansett's rent-free period.

Australia's Federal Court last Thursday granted the administrators six days to determine the precise position of all leasing companies to Ansett, during which time Ansett was protected from paying rents on about 70 per cent of its fleet.

That deadline expired at 7 pm (NZ time) yesterday and at this story's press time it was unclear if any new arrangement had been put in place.

Twenty three of the planes are leased from French bank Credit Lyonnais which has refused to rule out repossessing the planes if the administrators do not come up with a solution.

A spokesman for the administrators yesterday declined to comment on reports that Qantas was seeking to deal directly with the owners of Ansett's planes.

"That's really for Qantas - if it wants to go to the lease companies direct," said the spokesman.

Before the meeting, administrator Mark Mentha, of Arthur Andersen, acknowledged Ansett's revival would be hurt if its former parent company, Air New Zealand, also collapsed.

But he was confident Air NZ would survive, he told ABC Radio.

"To have Air NZ go into statutory administration would be a devastating blow, but we've got a number of models to address should it happen.

"But I'm confident that Air NZ will get through its problems and we are offering them every assistance, as they are offering us."

He was hopeful that Ansett could be flying again within days.

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